Chicagoan to head pro-Israel group

Lee ‘Rosy’ Rosenberg, jazz recording industry veteran and venture capitalist, to become president of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee

March 21, 2010|By Melissa Harris | CHICAGO CONFIDENTIAL

When Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu visits Washington this week to press the United States for support, a Chicagoan will be at the center of the political maneuvering. And it's not the one you think.

Lee "Rosy" Rosenberg, 53, is a jazz recording industry veteran and venture capitalist who lives on the Near North Side. But his business investments in Chicago have ebbed as he has gained more influence among Washington's pro-Israel lobby.

At a conference Sunday, he will become one of the most powerful behind-the-scenes players in U.S. foreign policy: president of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee. AIPAC, one of the country's most secretive lobbying groups, declined to make Rosenberg available for an interview.

AIPAC's power comes not from its lobbyists but from its more than 100,000 members who raise money, advocate and pool resources for politicians. And Rosenberg, according to more than a dozen friends, is a master at building relationships with powerful people. Those relationships are being tested in the wake of a public spat over proposed housingin a contested area of East Jerusalem.

"This is as difficult a time to assume the role (of AIPAC president) as one could imagine," said U.S. Rep. Mike Quigley, an Illinois Democrat, who counts Rosenberg as a constituent and adviser. "The fact that he and the president have had a relationship helps now. I don't know of a time when that relationship has been so sorely tested."

President Barack Obama first courted Rosenberg during his run for U.S. Senate in 2002.

Obama "did the smart thing and figured out who's who," said David Semmel, Rosenberg's friend and business partner. "Rosy was clearly emerging at that point as the future leader of AIPAC in Chicago."

Rosenberg later traveled to Israel with Obama, served on his national finance committee and introduced him at AIPAC's 2008 policy conference. In two rare interviews, with Politico and the Jerusalem Post during the campaign, Rosenberg assured Jews that Obama would champion their causes.

"I don't think AIPAC has made any secret of the reality that his friendship with the president played a role in Rosy's rise," said Steve Rosen, a former 23-year, high-ranking AIPAC official, who was indicted then cleared of allegedly receiving classified information on Iran. "Mind you, he would have risen anyway. He's a guy who works very hard at fundraising, very hard in the political arena. It was not as if he was plucked out of nowhere. He paid his dues. But I'm sure nobody was blind to the fact that he's from Chicago. He knows Rahm Emanuel. He knows David Axelrod."

Rosenberg's influence also is built on his family's legacy in Chicago and a network of friends, who have partnered with him in business and on Israeli causes. His father, Lester, known as "Big Rosy," led a campaign thatraised a record$67 million for the Jewish United Fund in 2001 and chaired the Jewish Federation of Metropolitan Chicago from 2002 to 2004. He has visited Israel more than 50 times.

One of the younger Rosenberg's trips to Israel 15 years ago, which was followed by an invitation to AIPAC's annual policy conference, set him "off and running," according to an interview with Jewish United Fund News. The conference "changed my life fundamentally," Rosenberg said in an AIPAC "video testimonial" for this year's event. "I have not missed a conference in my last 14 years."

J.B. Pritzker said he was kvelling — Yiddish for swelling with pride — at the thought of his longtime friend and business partner helming AIPAC.

"Rosy seems undaunted by powerful people," Pritzker said. "You might hear stories from people, about how he has really built AIPAC in Chicago. He went to some of the major powerful players, some of whom had been completely unengaged. There are people who are reticent to do that, but not Rosy. Because of his belief in the issue, he has no problem with those kinds of meetings."

Rosenberg also is a businessman with investments spread among dozens of fields, from touring Broadway productions to television documentaries to the Park West theater in Lincoln Park, where he hosts an annual party,called Rosy's Root Beer Open, now in its 40th year.

Rosenberg grew up in Highland Park and attended the University of Michigan, where he met Jonathan Diamond. Diamond hired Rosenberg, then in his 20s and working at a Chicago real estate investment firm, to handle accounting for GRP Records, founded by music producer Larry Rosen and Oscar- and Grammy-winning composer Dave Grusin. Rosenberg became a shareholder.

"I believe that the foray did not end well," Semmel said. "The little anecdote I've heard is that from the day he closed that deal, it rained for like 87 straight days in Chicago. … Investing is a tough business where you don't win them all."